Review of the Sony Reader

I posted previously about the Sony Reader going on sale in Ireland and the UK through Waterstones and picked one up myself last Friday so thought I’d do a mini review of it.

First off, Waterstones are to be recommended as one of the few British retailers in Ireland who actually stay true to the exchange rate on all their products. There’s no paddy tax whackery going on with them. UK Price of the Reader is £199 and €249 here, which is about right.

They did fail by not having any of the Readers available on launch day. A phone around all of the Rep. of Ireland stores revealed that there wasn’t one to be had in the 26 counties. Newry had tons of them though. Courier foobar was what I was told – and I can well believe. How many of us have eagerly tracked a delivery from half way round the world only to find the trail stops somewhere in a depot around Dublin Airport. Only in Ireland.

But this ain’t meant to be no sad song about Irish couriers. So I’ll continue.

Out of the box, the reader had a number of sample and full length books already installed. There is also a a CD with 100 public domain books (think Project Gutenberg) which are formatted specifically for the reader. A USB cable is supplied also. I’m not one for reading manuals with products and I doubt many people will need to RTFM on this product. It couldn’t be easier to operate. If you have opposable thumbs, you’ll be able to operate it

It feels sturdy in the hand, weighing about the same as a 200 page hardback with the dimensions about that of a paperback book (13 cm x 18cm). The screen display is 9cm by 12.5cm and is, as reported by others, crystal clear and like paper. The screen does pick up sun glare, but it is not like the glare on a notebook, mobile phone screen or an iPhone. A quick tilt to the right angle makes the display perfectly readable again with no reflections. In the dark, it’s like paper too, so you will need a reading light!

I find it difficult to read from a screen for any length of time, but found no such problem with the reader. This is all down to the screen technology in the device. A total thumbs up for that.

The various buttons on the reader allow you to turn from page to page, zoom in/out and create bookmarks. A menu button returns to the library screen where a list of all the books installed on the devices is shown. It can hold about 160 books at one time – more than enough for any bookworm!

When connected to a PC, the supplied eBook software provides an iTunes-like interface which allows books and files (such as pdf’s) to be added to the reader via drag and drop. MP3 music files and JPG images are also amongst a list of supported files. Music sounds very good from the device, although this is obviously not what it is intended for.

I was disappointed with the PDF support. There is no zoom capability, meaning that reading pdf’s is a bit of a strain. This depends on the size of font and paper size of the original document of course. There is a way around this by first converting the PDF to RTF, but it would have been nice to have the zoom capability.

The selection of eBooks via the Waterstones store isn’t brilliant, but they are adding more all the time. This is really early days still for electronic readers and I think that once sales of the Sony device and Amazon’s Kindle increase, the selection of books available electronically will also increase.

I had read it was possible to read RSS feeds on the device through the library software, but I haven’t seen any option to do so. I found Feedbooks instead.

As well as having a selection of eBooks in various formats (including the Sony Reader), Feedbooks allows you to make newspapers from your favourite feeds and then download the feed in Reader format. This makes for a more comfortable, less eye straining read.

The Sony Reader and other devices like it will never replace books completely, but they do offer an alternative to a notebook for reading books and other supported electronic files. What’s more, your eyes will be relieved!

[More on the Sony Reader tecnical specifications here]